Do you cough up blood?

Never a good sign. Best see a doctor.

Such symptoms are usually for breathing difficulties: imagine asthma multiplied a thousand times.

As your lungs are contaminated or damaged and struggle to draw oxygen you cough harder and harder. Either because of damaged tissue or your lungs gradually fill with water or phlegm.

As you cough harder and harder you eventually break down tissue and cough up blood.

Small amounts at first.

The damaged tissue then pulls further blood into the lungs and you cough harder and harder…

Few natural diseases in Britain these days have these symptoms.

Heavy smoking severely damages your lungs. Some industries too such as coal mines. Often with such coughing up of blood you’ll find tar or coal dust mixed in there.

One major factor though is living or working next to toxic sources. Such as airports. Which, nuclear reactors or waste dumps or very large chemical factories aside, are the largest man-made polluters.

That's why the workforce have to wear ear protectors and masks as repeated exposure causes cancer etc.

That's why air and noise monitors are required around airports.

As we know there has been no monitoring of air and noise by Infratil and TDC – in fact the noise and air monitors were removed from a school and tower block or not even supplied: over months and years.

Brian White and Richard Samuel were tasked with ensuring proper public safety at an airport slated for expansion for cargo flights.

No monitors. No data. No problem.

But there’s survey in USA around Seattle airport for the effects between districts near and further from the airport:

"What kinds of health effects may be occurring to the population in your neighborhood can be seen from a report, dated June 20, 1997 to the Georgetown Crime Prevention and Community Council by the Seattle-King County Department of Public Health. Georgetown is an area of Seattle, and surrounds the King County International Airport (Boeing Field), King County, in turn.

When comparing hospitalization rates for Georgetown (Zip Code 98108) to those of King and North King Counties, the following, alarming statistics resulted:

a 57% higher asthma rate
a 28% higher pneumonia/influenza rate
a 26% higher respiratory disease rate
an 83% higher pregnancy complication rate
a 50% higher infant mortality rate
genetic diseases are statistically higher
mortality rates are 48% higher for all causes of death: 57% higher for heart disease, a 36% higher cancer death rate with pneumonia and influenza among the top five leading causes
average life expectancy 70.4 years (the same as in many developing nations) compared to Seattle’s of 76.0

Neither of the previous articles mentioned another impact of aviation.

Currently airports do virtually no reporting of large volumes of de-icing fluids (which are comprised of several toxic chemicals), fuel spills, oils, greases and other pollutants which regularly flow from airports and are shed from flying planes into nearby streams, lakes and aquifers. In addition to chemicals formed in exhaust, de-icing fluids are significant pollutants in surprisingly large amounts, not only during winter weather, but also in unexpected times such as summer, when some aircraft types are sprayed to prevent formation of ice on upper wing surfaces in cold, high-altitude operation.

De-icing fluids represent hazards to water tables, streams and waste water treatment plants. As they are shed from planes, the fluids are corrosive to paint"

The above report outlines a radius of 24 miles for the impact of such pollution: from Manston up past Canterbury and almost to Dover. Or from Herne Bay down to Manston.

It’s worth remembering that Thanet has the highest lung cancer rate in Kent. And a specialist cancer ward for specialist cancers such as leukaemias and the like.

And an 11 year early death rate.

11 years.

So in most parts of Kent and UK you’d die at around 80 years of age. But in Thanet you’d die around age 69.

That’s a massive statistical skew for just 100,000 people on a Kent population of 1.3M.

Off the scale.

Those are Third World death rates: Kazakhstan, Bolivia, Iraq - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

Coal mines probably have something to do with that. Smoking wouldn’t really do it. But throw in an airport and a mercury factory and the most polluted drinking water in South East England and you’ve a toxic cocktail that endangers you.

And kills you 11 years earlier.

Throw in removing the air and noise monitors by Infratil and Richard Samuel and Brian White and your councillors for unregulated airport expansion built on the water supply and you have to wonder what has been going on.

Even KCC have walked away from the problem now.

But your children and elderly relatives lungs are more fragile, so the genetic effect of drinking polluted water and breathing polluted air, (the figure above is a 57% higher chance of asthma and c.28% for other serious breathing difficulties) is a gift to pass on to their children and grand-children.

So you coughing up blood may be the least of your worries.

What have our councillors and civil servants and MP’s been doing to endanger us all for so many years.

And still the planes fly over the towns at the lowest and most polluting level and land on a runway built over the drinking water supply.

What have they been doing - and does anyone know how to scrub chemicals out of the water supply or your lungs?

It could be left – or done very slowly - and the problem will sort itself out as the people die off.

And all those wasted years backwards and forwards to the hospital, the specialist cancer ward and lying awake at night coughing and coughing as your lungs gasp for an extra breath.

Too late then. Damage done.

What have our councillors and civil servants been doing?

Failed. Failed. Failed.

Time for Change.